Reclamation Day!
by CastawayProxy
Summary: Nothing is as it seems in post-war Appalachia; sentient AI, fabled cryptids, eerie cults and black projects behind every corner... And two young misfit Vault dwellers finding themselves in the centre of all of it. With new and bizarre friends and foes, they fight for survival in a hostile new world, and learn, that history is written by the victorious - or isn't it?
1. 2082 - The Tenth Birthday

_So here we are... My little approach to the events of Fallout 76 as seen through the eyes of a vault dweller caught among causality. I have a good bunch of chapters for this by now, and will add one every now and then whenever I feel like it._

_Please note that the story does take some liberties and alternative approaches to the game's story - especially when it comes to humans, who still can be found alive in my version of Appalachia._

_As always, any feedback - positive or negative - is very welcome, as long as you keep it public and do not send me any DMs._

_I neither own Fallout, nor any of the mentioned canon characters/creatures/factions in this story._

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**[2082] The tenth birthday**

"September 5th, 2082

Today's that day again. _The fifth of September._

My dad and I agreed of this date to by my birthday every year, since… None of us knew my original birthday… I officially turned ten today. Well… _Probably…_ Who knows... This is my first recording on my brand new birthday gift: _A real Pip-Boy!_

It's amazing. I mean… A little heavy to wear, but I swear I'll never take it off again! It has so many funny functions!

I got it earlier yesterday to get me in the birthday mood. But now I'm just tired… Spent the entire night playing Atomic Command on it…

We had a little party today, and dad invited Gannet Anderson. He's another kid, a little younger than me. He hardly ever speaks, but I knew he was happy to be with us. He ate almost half of the cake by himself, and dad said he was impressed by that. Gannet and I then went to my room to read comic books while dad had to prepare for late shift.

It was nice. I don't care too much for birthday parties I think, but I'm glad dad still tries to keep me happy. I know Gannet's mom never does anything like that for him. Maybe that's why he likes to hang out at _our place_ so much.

So… I asked dad what else I can do with my Pip-Boy other than playing games, and he said I could use it to keep track of things. Like, do notes, record things and all, so… That's what I'm doing now…

Gannet always wondered how I ended up with the dad I have now.

I mean… Everyone in the Vault knows I'm _not supposed_ to be here… No one is mean to me or anything, but sometimes… People give me this weird look… Like… As if I was some sort of… _Mistake…_ And… Sometimes I think that too...

So… _How I got here…_

I only remember little chunks… And… I don't even know my original name. When dad found me, he named me after his favourite character from Captain Cosmos… Yes… I'm named after the centaurian commander with a sun for a head… Ironic, because I hate telling anyone what to do... I always wanted to be Captain Cosmos' engineer instead!

Anyway... I sometimes dream about the day the bombs fell. Of course back then I didn't know it was bombs… I didn't know _anything…_

I was… _Really_ young… I must have been tiny… When I try to remember my original parents, they're always huge… Sometimes I remember my mother. Like.. Really tall and… Sometimes wearing something like… A miner outfit I think… With one of those masks and helmets that have lamps on them... She lifts me up and puts me on her shoulder and together we walk to that little blue house somewhere in the hills.

I see a man… I think he's my original father… Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing big glasses. He's carving pumpkins and places them on the porch…

I can't see much of his face, but I think he's happy. He chuckles and presents one of the pumpkin's faces to us. It looks like a silly cat.

Then suddenly things go… _All weird…_

Like…_ I_ feel weird… My parents talk about something… I don't really understand it… I think it's something about mom's work and that she has to attend in a bit, and… Something about a strike…

I think… Unlike me… She doesn't like robots. But I don't understand much of it...

I decide to go and play instead. I pick up a toy vertibird and a little flying saucer model. Spreading my arms and running through the garden, I make noises and pretend the vertibird and the flying saucer were doing a race around the trees with the main gate being the goal.

Then however I get distracted. I see an animal in the distance, and it looks nice. I smile and walk towards it.

I leave the garden, but that's okay, I mean everything's safe… Still walking towards it I make my way uphill, only to see that it moved backwards, but it doesn't really look scared. I think it wants to play with me, and I'm happy! I made a new friend!

I chuckle and we play this funny spotting and chasing game for… I dunno… Quite a while.

Eventually we reach a sort of… Platform… And a door that leads into the mountain. It catches my attention, so I climb the stairs up to the platform, walk towards the huge door and begin to curiously poke it. It has a number on it. _76._ Curious... But pretty!

Suddenly sirens start and I'm immediately scared. I turn around but my friend is gone, and I realize that I have no idea where I am…

I'm getting nervous, running towards the ceiling and trying to spot my house somewhere below, but… I'm just too far away, I can't see it anymore… I begin to call for 'anyone'., hoping that someone could hear me and take me home. And indeed, after some minutes, people come… All of them are in a hurry and they seem scared by the sirens too, but none of them came because_ I_ called them…

It gets more and more, and I feel like I'm drowning in people. Some are shouting, some are crying, but most of them want to get into the mountain. I just want to go back home…

I have people bumping into me right and left, and suddenly someone accidentally hits my face with their elbow and I lose one of my models.

I begin to panic, and cry. I just want to get out of this…

Suddenly I feel someone picking me up. A tall man in a blue suit wearing a helmet smiles at me and carries me through the mass of people. It's my dad… My _recent_ dad…

Of course I didn't know that back then. I was just scared and felt like being _kidnapped_. The door of the mountain opens and he and a few other people rush inside, but I can still hear the shouting from outside, and then… _Gunshots… _He covers my ears, but I can still hear it…

The next thing I remember is him bossing one of the other ones around, telling them to not question him or his private life… Today I know it was him telling the other ones to not ask questions about me; that I was _his daughter_, whether I was on the list or not…

I mean… It worked _for a while…_ He was a respected person and all…

And when the truth finally came out… There was nothing anyone could have done…

Dad and me had to got to the Overseer. He explained himself. She just sat there, not saying a word, but listening to everything he said. It felt like hours to me. She remained quiet for all that really… _Really_ long time, then ordered him to _continue what he started_ and take care for me.

She said it in a really… Weird tone…

It should have made my dad happy, and I should have felt less scared too, but instead, it felt sad… _She_ felt sad, and I could see it… The way she looked at my dad and me… I will never forget that…

Something must have really hurt her…

_Maybe she wasn't as 'lucky' as I was on that day…_"


	2. 2084 - The Shroud and the Mechanist

_So far many thanks for the faves and follows of chapter 1. I'm really surprised that a 76 story got recognition to begin with! Let's hope the future chapters will meet your expectations. 6.6_

_Also, Engineer455 - You're actually onto something here ;)_

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**[2084] The Shroud and the Mechanist**

"October 31st, 2084

Life in a Vault can be… Really boring… _And annoying…_

Most of the time I sit somewhere and dream of being outside… I don't even mind that we have no sun… But I really miss the wind and everything smelling like… _Like the world..._

School sucks, and most of my time I'm happy when I can do something for myself and in my own speed. It'd gotten kinda worse the last year. Dad says that I have my own way of learning things, but I'm sure most other kids think I'm sorta stupid or so. No one really says anything, but sometimes everyone looks at me as if I didn't even understand English… But I guess it's useless to explain myself… I can see how the other kids sometimes think I don't notice. But I do - and I don't even care… I just dream myself outside. And so does Gannet.

He is kinda the only real friend I made ever since we were brought here. Most of our free time we hang out in the maintenance areas, talking to Mr. Fillion or watching the robots. He says I'm not missing anything and that the other kids are stupid; that everyone's stupid here, and that one day we are going to escape. He makes it sound like an adventure story, and sometimes… Sometimes I think he means what he says…

I remember when we first met. I was still sad, and missing my family outside… I wasn't feeling like at home and didn't know how much my recent dad would love me... I told Gannet that I didn't belong here… That I was kidnapped, and that I just wanted to go back home… He said he would help me get out of here… And since then he never stopped believing that this was his new mission...

I think that was six years ago. I still don't fit in, but I'm trying. Sometimes. I don't really feel like I need to make everyone happy. But I want dad to be happy… He's always so sad when remembering the world outside, and - by now - I finally understand why. Because_ there is none_ anymore. So I try to be a good Vault Dweller - For dad.. I do my jobs, go to school, pretend to be a normal person and dream myself outside. But it's just that… A dream, a fantasy… A thing I play and imagine when no one looks...

But Gannet is serious… How does he even want to do that? And even if… Where would he even want to go? If there was war outside, maybe the bad people are still everywhere around too. Those Communists… Whatever the hell a Communist even is…

I still never received a proper answer to that question, regardless of how many people I asked about that… None of the grown ups knows what communism is, but all of therm claim that it is… Apparently… Something satanic… Should I tell them that Satan isn't real? Maybe another day…

...Today is a good day. Too good to steal other people's fantasy friends. Today is Halloween, or - How Gannet and I call it: The only day in the year we are encouraged to run around as the real us. And we decided to be the heroes. Okay… Maybe not heroes…. But we're no villains either… We're something in between…

He's the Silver Shroud and I'm the Mechanist.

Yeah, I know, the Shroud and the Mechanist were fighting one another in most of the episodes, but Gannet and I agreed, that circumstances can always change, and sometimes alliances have to be forged. Both were doing the good thing - from their point of view…

Gannet was lucky. He found a real black coat and a hat and only had to paint himself a toy gun and everyone instantly knew who he was. For me it was more tricky. But dad gave me a spare security helmet, and I attached my glowing goggles onto it - and two teaspoons as antennae. I built the armour out of pieces of a broken hazmat suit - It already came with lots of gadgets and looks really cool. And for the cape I just used a grey tablecloth.

We already finished our costumes yesterday, and were play-pretending to protect the Vault from evil doers from outer space. I think dad got really annoyed with us. He just quietly looked at us for a while, then buried his head in paperwork as he always does. I tried to cheer him up and stopped, and offered to help him sorting his desk instead, but he said he was busy taking notes.

Today Gannet and I finally attend the Halloween party - all by our self. No parents. I mean, I'm twelve! I can save the Vault if I want to! _If_ I want to… Meaning, if the inhabitants promise to _behave!_...

When we arrived in the atrium, we already spotted a few other kids in costumes too. I loved Jerry's costume, you could instantly recognize him as Frankenstein's monster! And one of his friends was - I think - a dog, or a wolf Most kids were sticking to their usual friends, meaning that Gannet and me stood somewhere outside, not really being part of any of them. The only other outsider was Alex, that boy from my science class. He just stood there in his cowboy costume eating sweets and shoving even more of them into his pockets. He is older than most of us. That's probably why he never really talks to any of us. Gannet and I tried to make friends with him last year. He just gave us the middle finger. And later when I asked him if he was okay, he punched me and walked away calling me a freak. He's a weird person. Almost entirely like a true adult…

After a while Gannet and me gave up trying. We just sat down at one of the tables, ate sweets too, and got into a really long discussion about whether and why living in the Vault for the next thousand years might turn all of us into Morlocks or so.

Eventually however, the day turned out really nice. At least for me. Most people thought that my costume looked really cool, so I was nominated for the costume contest and even won it! I mean, yeah, I know it's easy for a costume to be liked if people _recognize the character_, hence no one nominating the wolf or the cowboy, but still… I was kinda happy that someone liked my work.

When Gannet walked me home to our living quarter, I offered that we share the trophy. After all we came as a team, and our characters were from the same universe and all. He just chuckled and said I should place it on my desk and that he'll win his own one next year. After we said goodbye and I went inside, I found dad where I left him a few hours before.

He was still at his desk, half buried in paperwork. By now he had fallen asleep, so I made sure to be quiet. I grabbed a blanket and pulled it over his shoulders, then decided to place my trophy in front of him, so he could see it when waking up. After all, he donated parts for it, so it made him a winner too! When I caught a glimpse of his work though, I stopped for a second, giving some of the notes and schematics a curious look.

I never really knew (or dared to ask) what exactly he had been doing in his time with the military, but I didn't have to be an expert to recognize a rocket or a missile I saw them in a document. Most of the writing didn't really make much sense to me. _Project names, codes, facilities with odd names long numbers and even more codes… _When I saw the words "Eyes Only" I unwillingly chuckled. _Everyone has eyes_! That's a silly thing to write somewhere…

Upon hearing dad mumbling while asleep though, I stopped and took a step back. I didn't want to wake him up, or - even worse - upset him by being nosy. So Instead I simply placed the trophy and my helmet on his documents and then decided to head to bed.

This is the Mechanist, signing off!"


End file.
